If the mile is truly the glamour event of track and field, then Jillian Smith, a precocious junior from South Jersey, was the "it" girl of the 2008 indoor season. In the space of less than a week, she destroyed impressive fields in the Reebok Boston Indoor Games and the Millrose Games in New York, making it look unconscionably easy in both cases. Ask her what her secret was, and she'll tell you it's all due to cross country.

After a lifetime of autumns spent playing soccer, Jillian finally decided to make the switch to cross country this year, feeling it would help her performances in indoor and outdoor track. "I wasn't even planning to compete at first, I was just going to train with the team a few days a week," Jillian recalls. "But I found out I liked it a lot more than I thought I would." That happened in spite of an inauspicious competitive debut: In her first race at Ocean County Park, she was disqualified for going around a tree the wrong way. "I didn't even know it until after I'd finished," she recalls. "It was a big learning experience."

Jillian proved a quick study in the harrier sport. At season's end she wound up finishing second to Melanie Thompson by one second at the New Jersey Meet of Champions race, clocking 18:03 over the challenging Holmdel Park 5,000-meter layout. "That wasn't bad, considering I didn't think I'd break 20 minutes at the beginning of the season," she says. "I just got stronger and faster as the season went on."

Two weeks later Jillian ran at the Foot Locker Eastern regional meet at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City, and finished in the heartbreak 11t_ spot, the first finisher to miss qualifying for the nationals. But Jillian wasn't upset by missing a trip to San Diego by less than a second because it wasn't a goal prior to the season. If anything, the missed opportunity helped her get ready for indoor track sooner.

It was then that the benefits of a season of cross country -- namely, a solid base of mileage and a strong aerobic system -- started to become apparent. "The transition to track was a whole lot easier and quicker," she says. "It felt like I was a season ahead of where I usually am." That feeling was borne out in her first meet where she ran a mile in 4:57, almost her PR from 2007.

It helped that Jillian had run at both meets the previous year, finishing second in Boston and fourth at Millrose. It also helped that the winner of those races was a senior teammate, Danielle Tauro, who's now a freshman at Michigan. "We definitely tried to pair those two up," says Brian Zatorski, the girls' coach at Southern. "They started working out two times a week, then three, then four and finally they were working out together almost every day. Our philosophy is that the better athletes throw the rope back over the fence and pull someone else along. Jill's got a younger girl that she's working with now, passing on what she learned the way Danielle taught her."

Jillian admits that Danielle was a huge help. She learned about things like warming up and stretching, but the most important thing she learned was how to deal with the pressure of running in big races. "She never showed it, and from watching her I've learned to deal with it better," Jillian says. "I just try to block everything out. I imagine I'm running by myself."

At the end of her two big races this year, that image became reality by the finish line, as Jillian simply bided her time during the jostling of the early stages of the race, then took control with a strong move over the last quarter of the race. That was a big change from the sit-back-and-kick strategy she learned in middle school.

With plenty of confidence from her increased endurance base and some early season workouts and races, Jillian anchored a distance medley relay with a 4:50 split in an early meet, then ran a couple of 800m open races in 2:17 and 2:07.

Even without any real sharpening workouts, Jillian was able to win her two biggest midseason races, Reebok and Millrose, by big margins. "We had plans based on a couple different possible scenarios. I wanted to stay with the front pack, as long as they weren't being too aggressive," she says. "Last year I didn't know what to expect, This time I was a veteran, and could just focus on what I was going to do."

See page 2 for an extensive list of Jillian's workouts
Jillian's Workouts

Jillian's coach, Brian Zatorski, shared her workout schedule leading up to the big midseason invitational mile races. All practice sessions include a warm-up, which includes a 800m jog and two laps of in and out (stride the straightaways, walk the turns) and one lap of a 200m in and out. Sprint drills, strength drills and stretching follow.

01.16 2 sets of 3x800 at 2:30 pace; 1:30 recovery between reps and 400m jog between sets. No spikes.

01.17 15-minute warm-up (after drills, etc.). Leg turnover workout. Run 100m in 16 seconds, turn around and jog back to start, run 110m (coming through the 100m mark in the same 16 seconds) and jog back to the start. Do the same drill at 10m increments all the way through 200m always hitting that first 100m in 16 seconds and maintaining pace throughout with a jog back to the start recovery. After she hits the 200 repetition, she comes back down in increments of 20m (180, 160, 140, etc.) always hitting the 100m mark in 16 seconds with an equal distance jog recovery. We run this workout with the wind if possible.

01.19 New Balance Games at NYC Armory. Originally scheduled to run the Invitational mile but plans were changed when Jillian received (and happily accepted) an entry into the Millrose Mile invite. In an effort to get a fast race in preparation for Boston, Jillian ran the third leg of the 4x800 in 2:07.4, hitting splits of 29.7, 31.9 (1:01.6), 33.0 (1:34.6) and 32.8 (2:07.4).

01.20 Rest day: no running

01.21 Easy 40-minute run to get legs ready for tomorrow's workout.

01.22 4 x 200 at 35 seconds with 2:00 recovery (in trainers) followed by 400m jog recovery; Split 800m (600 in 1:45, 30-second rest, 200 in 32 seconds) followed by 400m jog recovery; then 4 x 400m in spikes (72-74 each) with 1:30 recovery in between, followed by 400m jog recovery after the set; 1 x 300m (200m in 32-33 and then accelerate last 100m to simulate race finish); Finish with a 10-minute easy cool down. (Workout performed at night on the track to avoid afternoon winds.)

01.23 Dynamic 40 minutes. First 5 minutes at hard clip, then 3 sets of 8 easy/2 hard, finish with 5 minutes easy. Strides in the grass to loosen up afterwards.

01.24 Same workout as 1/17. Travel to Boston after practice.

01.25 Easy 30 minutes in the Boston Commons park with strides to follow.